


Kaboom

by Kerkerian



Series: Mirage [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Aftermath, Friendship/Love, Gen, Grief, Mourning, Post-episode: S05e05 “Jack + Kinematics + Safe Cracker + MgKNO3 + GTO”, divergence from canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28789704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerkerian/pseuds/Kerkerian
Summary: How Mac is grieving after the mission...
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016) & Riley Davis, Riley Davis & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Series: Mirage [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111409
Comments: 25
Kudos: 89





	Kaboom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeddyTheCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeddyTheCat/gifts), [NatalieRyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NatalieRyan/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own MacGyver.
> 
> After watching the episode, I was in tears and in awe. I think they did Jack justice (and that bathroom scene- I was waiting for Mac to break down the whole time, and Lucas Till nailed it). And Riley was amazing.  
> I didn't think I'd write anything about Jack's death, but it turns out that this wanted out.   
> The sequel called "Let's Talk About Cairo"on the other hand is a fix-it.

"As long as you got me around, you got family. And I ain't going nowhere."

Jack Dalton, S02e06

The tears are coming frequently now that they've caught “Kovac”.

Mac tries to keep it together when he's around the team, and he manages rather well in his own opinion, but when he's alone, he breaks. Sometimes it happens at odd moments, like when he's just taking something out of the fridge or cleaning the shower. More often, it's because of something that's reminding him of Jack.

The pain is omnipresent by now, exacerbated by the guilt he's still feeling. He should've tried to get in touch with Jack after those aborted phone calls, should've asked Riley to do her darnedest to track those. He should have had Jack's back. All throughout Jack's absence, he felt useless whenever he thought of his friend, and in the end, he did fail him after all.

Whenever he's thought this far, he feels like breaking something. A number of items in the house have already born the brunt, and he finds himself sweeping up broken pieces of glass, ceramic or plastic more often than he'd care to count.

It doesn't make it any better, destroying things, but there's nothing else he can do. There's nothing that will help with the deep, lingering ache that's keeping him up at night, because nothing he does can bring Jack back. The loss, the mourning of an absence, is something he's already familiar with, but this time, it's bringing him to his knees. He told Riley to give it time, but somehow, that doesn't seem to work in this case. Every morning, he wakes up and feels a weight bearing down on him that's almost making it impossible to get up.

When he got the box with Jack's Metallica t-shirts, he stood motionless for an unaccounted amount of time, unable to open it. He finally did it, with shaking hands, but when he caught a whiff of Jack's scent, unmistakable and so familiar, it was like a slap in the face. So he closed the box again and hid it in his wall cupboard. He pushed it into a corner, then crawled in as well, hunching in on himself while the tears overwhelmed him once more.

The dog tags are another thing that are keeping him up at night. He put them into the box with Jack's dad's dog tags; for some reason, Jack left that box to him as well. Maybe he thought it'd mean more to Mac than to his sister, and the notion is touching. Maybe Jack hoped that Mac would keep up the tradition to come to the cemetery and talk to him, just as he did with his old man.

The truth is that Mac dreads going to the cemetery. He doesn't think he'll find Jack there. It all still feels so unreal, it's like he just vanished into thin air. Mac wants to believe that there's something like an afterlife, that Jack's reunited with his dad now and maybe even watching over his loved ones from afar. If the latter were possible though, wouldn't Jack's dad have watched over his son and prevented him from being killed?

Mac struggles with these kinds of thoughts on most nights. And the notion that Jack died in a bomb blast is haunting him. After all these years of Mac disarming bombs in Jack's presence, it seems like a cruel irony that this is how Jack's life ended. Mac tries not to go there, tries not to imagine what it may have looked like, if it was quick or if Jack suffered. He probably could find out, but he doesn't dare. In any case, all of this is just making it worse.

Initially, he thought that it might get better after they found Kovac. The days before that postcard arrived were... abysmal. Waiting in that hangar when the casket was brought out... it took all Mac had to even keep standing. The wake at his house was terrible because it seemed too surreal, a weird kind of party nobody would have wanted. In the night before Jack's body arrived in the States, Mac was brimming with nervous energy. It felt like he was waiting for Jack to actually come home, as if he was going to walk in through the front door any moment. Getting dressed that morning was almost impossible, since his fingers were trembling so badly.

It only got real when Mac received the dog tags, and he felt like screaming right then. Instead, he kept it together, dread tingling up and down his spine as he realized that it was all true, that Jack really was dead and not coming back.

During the wake, Riley was the only one who didn't put up a brave face for the sake of others, and Mac wanted to go and hug her and show her that he too was on the verge of breaking down, but somehow, he couldn't. If he had broken down then, he'd not have gotten up again.

And now, weeks later, he's gotten into a weird kind of rhythm: being functional at work, pretending to be doing okay, but giving in to his grief at night, unless the team is over at his house.

Riley is being very quiet as well. They did that _Die Hard_ marathon, but it wasn't the same without Jack. Neither was driving around in the GTO. Riley is putting up a brave face too, but to Mac it's evident that she is still hurting as well; she rarely smiles these days. The rest of the team is watching them attentively or so it seems, but both Riley and Mac ward off any attempt to address the matter.

Even Desi has given up trying to console Mac, and for some reason, they are barely seeing each other outside of work; maybe she's sensing that he needs to be alone. Maybe she's sensing that she isn't what he needs right now, that no one can be that person currently, because that person, contrary to what they once promised, is gone.

On the day of their manniversary, Mac finally does visit the grave. It's next to Jack's dad, which is strangely comforting. Apart from that, there's nothing positive about it. Seeing Jack's name on that stone only makes it terribly real once more, and Mac doesn't know what to say. He just stands there, thinking that Riley had a point when she said there's a hole in her heart and nobody else could fill it; it's what Mac feels as well. Coming to think of it, it seems that his heart consists of nothing but holes nowadays.

For a moment, he falters; he could just lie down here and not get up again. He could just join Jack, wherever he is now. But he knows that that's not what Jack would have wanted, and it'd be unfair towards the others. Life may be unfair towards him, but he still can't find it in him to be so cruel. Somehow, he needs to continue living, whether he wants to or not. He starts laughing at the notion: he's always so considerate, he can't even kill himself.

“It's not what we agreed on,” he hears himself say with a stranger's voice, laughing like a maniac. “You go kaboom, I go kaboom, remember?”

He laughs until he doubles over. Jack called him, maybe he wanted Mac to come over and help him. Maybe he had a hunch that he might need his partner for this. Maybe Mac could have disarmed that bomb.

No matter how often he ponders this, it always gets back to this point. His laughter turns into weeping. He crumples to the ground, crying loudly now, unaware how desperate he sounds, how unearthly.

But then there is another presence, a voice and two hands, someone who says his name and then pulls him into an embrace: it's Riley, and she's crying as well. Mac clings to her, all pretense forgotten, he just can't stop now. They stay like that for a long time, sharing their grief, wrapped around one another, until they're both entirely drained.

“Thought I'd find you here,” Riley eventually mutters, her voice small. “I noticed the date.”

Mac closes his burning eyes: it's one of the many dates that will always be painful. “Seemed wrong not to visit him today,” he replies hoarsely.

Riley bites back another sob: “I miss him so much,” she whispers, at which Mac nods, eyes swimming once more: “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Me too.”

When Mac comes home later that day, exhausted and frazzled, he takes a bottle of water out of the fridge and drinks about half of it, then he lingers, unsure what to do. His gaze falls onto the heap of mostly unread mail on the kitchen island. Half-heartedly, he begins to sort through it, freezing when he finds a letter from Jack's sister. They talked on the phone a few times, but she didn't mention any further mail.

With trembling fingers, he opens it, finding a note from her:

_Mac- this was found among Jack's personal belongings. Take care._

It's a small piece of paper, dirty and a little worn around the edges, that has been folded a few times. On it, there's Jack's unmistakable scrawl:

_Hey hoss, bummer that that phone call didn't work, huh? It's good to hear your voice, pal, I really miss you. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, in case this goes wrong, that I didn't call in order for you to come here, if that's what you think. I know what's going on in that noggin' of yours, so I thought I better set things straight: I really only wanted to talk, nothing more. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be home soon. If not... things happen for a reason, you know? And none of this is your fault. I feel like I better tell you so, because you got a penchant for beating yourself up about things that really are out of your control._

_I love you, man. Always. J xxx_

This is Jack looking out for his boy, as usual. Mac slides down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, fresh tears running down his cheeks even though he wouldn't have thought it possible, after the cemetery.

The pain is as raw as it was when they first heard what had happened, and it seems that that won't change in the foreseeable future.

He looks at Jack's note again: “I love you too, Jack,” he mutters. He can't help how broken he sounds, and even though he now knows that Jack didn't call him for help with the mission, he still feels like he didn't do enough. But he also knows, deep down, that Jack meant what he wrote when he wanted to put Mac's mind at ease: he always believed in his little bomb nerd, and that's as comforting as it is painful.

At one point, Mac does get up: Riley is going to come over later, and he finds that he's looking forward to it. He's actually relieved about what happened earlier, because having to pretend all the time is terribly exhausting.

Well. He assumes, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, that the others are probably aware of how he's really doing, and Bozer keeps bringing him coffee and food when they're at work and offers to come over and cook basically every other day. It's easy to forget, sometimes, that they are grieving as well, each in their own way.

For now, he only feels ready to contend with one other person, and Riley is the one who, apart from himself, was closest to Jack after all.

He takes the note to his bedroom and puts it into the box which holds the dog tags.

“Thanks, big guy,” he mutters, closing his eyes to hear Jack's answer ins his head: “ _Anytime, hoss. It's what family does_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I'm not a Native Speaker and therefore apologize for any mistakes.
> 
> Thank you, TeddyTheCat for being an enabler! And thanks to NatalieRyan for being a walking MacGyver Wiki! =)


End file.
